Black window content (e.g. Internet Explorer)

[matteo sisti sette]

At random times the content of an Internet Explorer window become completely black - that is, the whole window only contains a black rectangle.

I've observed it in Internet Explorer so far, but it's also almost the only application I've used after installing VB and the guest OS.

This looks like an issue with the GPU, doesn't it.

It happens when moving the mouse cursor. It looks like moving the cursor to some particular (though apparently random) positions systematically triggers the issue, making the whole contents of the window become black. Then you move the cursor and the contents get redrawn correctly. And so on, again and again.

I had never seen this on previous versions of VB.

The chances that this is a problem in Windows itself or Internet Explorer ar very remote, as I've never seen such a thing on windows on a physical machine.

[matteo sisti sette]

Definitely not an Internet Explorer issue. Same problem with Google Chrome, actually even worse: the window content is garbage most of the time: either all black, or with some white rectangle, or with apparently random pieces of graphics.

I forgot to mention i installed the experimental GPU acceleration support when installing the guest additions.

[Frank Mehnert]

Most likely 3D-related.

[matteo sisti sette]

Definitely 3D-related. The issue disappeared after disabling experimental 3D support.

That means:

• I reinstalled guest additions in safe mode
• I did check the "3d support (experimental)" checkbox
• but when asked whether to use "basic 3d support instead" I chose yes
• then I rebooted.

Now the problem is gone.

Besides the black-window issue, advanced 3d support also screws up the way image pixels are read in JavaScript from an image within a browser.

I'm sorry I can't provide a reproducible example, but I ran some javascript stuff based on processingjs.org in InternetExplorer, and I was getting unexpedted results (weird 1-pixel vertical offsets when reading image pixel data in JavaScript) that I hadn't ever seen with the same browser on Windows on physical machines; then I removed experimental 3D support and the issue disappeared (same browser, same javascript, same VM, with vs without experimental 3D support: different behavior).

[aeichner]

Please reopen if still relevant with a recent VirtualBox release.